Friday, July 11, 2014

I have been looking and "researching" everyone's ISNs (Interactive Student Notebooks)...more like creeping on everyone's blogs, pintrest, and websites. Lol.

I have come to the conclusion of several things:

1.) Students must feel like this is their "baby". They must be invested in this plain jane composition notebook. How do you do that? Well...I think they will take ownership of it when you allow them to make it their own by decorating it, doodling in it, and allowing them to put things in it that are meaningful to them. I may even add a section in the back of their notebooks that is just for them to put drawings, notes, doodles, etc in that will not be in the ToC (Table of Contents).

Note: I believe my first assignment for them is going to be to decorate the notebook and have them put a Spanish phrase (school appropriate of course) on the cover along with subject title in Spanish.

2.) I want to add a mini folder in the back of the notebook. I have around 150 students. I am contemplating laminating these suckers, but to be honest, that is A LOT of work for 150 kiddos. I'm not sure I'm up for that. I may just replace the folders as they become worn and torn.

3.) I also want to put a ribbon in for a place holder/bookmark. Ideas for how to do this: hot gluing one or two dots for them, already pre-cut ribbons to give students. That won't take a lot of prep. I can even glue mini folder and ribbon on in the same period to maximize my time.

4.) I'm going to provide several rolls of duct tape to put on the binding to more easily identify notebooks. I will also give them the opportunity to put their own style of duct tape on it as well.

Here's what mine looks like so far. I modged podged the pics from my trip to Spain to my cover to make it last longer and be more durable. I will encourage students to modge podge it on their own,

but I will provide that for students who can't get it or don't have it.

All of the things you see here are on a link in my last post. Scroll down to check it out!

Coming soon is a post on rubric ideas and student grading sheets for them to keep up with their own grades!

Sunday, July 6, 2014

I've recently been thinking. Dangerous...I know. I'm ready for a change in my classroom. It's time to bring out the "big guns". It's time for...INTERACTIVE NOTEBOOKS!!!

I hate notes...it drives me bonkers to see the kids so disengaged when we take notes. I've even gotten my note-taking skills down to a 10 min art. I ONLY give notes for 10 min. because that is about all I can stand of it! So I'm going to try my hand at ISN (Interactive Student/Spanish Notebooks).

I've been working extremely hard on creating some notebook templates and activities for my notebooks. I just want you to know that everything I share here I share for FREE. :) I just ask that you give credit where credit is due. Please feel free to change and modify these but remember to site your source (that's me). I also listed the sources that I got things from as well. I personally believe we should all share FREELY, but that's another blog post.

Enjoy and share what you find here...I will be posting more as I work on more pages.

When you click the link it looks like there may be formatting issues in google preview. However, when you download it and open in Word, it is totally fine.